Clear Channel is beefing up the lineup on its 910 AM frequency, first by hiring fired KGO hosts Len Tillem and Gene Burns, and now by adding Rush Limbaugh. The new lineup starts Jan. 3. Limbaugh’s move was revealed publicly in a tweet by 910 morning hosts Armstrong & Getty.

There are two schools of thought about why Limbaugh is changing stations. One is that his show is expensive and KSFO’s owner, Cumulus Media, is cutting costs. That’s why they laid off most of the talk hosts at KGO and replaced them with less expensive news staffers. Another theory is that Limbaugh’s syndicator, Premiere Networks, is owned by Clear Channel, and it wanted him to throw his weight behind 910 to help it attract an audience.

This is Clear Channel - who owns Premier Radio and the rights to Rush - exercising their rights to move Rush to their own stations. They have had the right to do this for year.

In the past, they had used their own stations for music, etc, and also made money on other stations they did not own by selling them Rush’ show. In other words, they were making money all over every market with music and with Rush.

Now with music failing - they have brought Rush to their own stations all across the country to save those stations. They did it over a year ago in dozens of markets. It is a symptom of the music format dying.

When Farid Suleman was running Citadel, he seemed to make it his mission to destroy AM conservative talk radio by ousting long-time local hosts and time-delaying national shows in order to break the live participatory experience of talk radio.

Suleman fired Melanie Morgan from KSFO, and a few years later he fired Lee Rodgers, even though KSFO was a money-maker station for his network.

Brian Sussman was elevated to morning host to replace Rodgers, but in my opinion he hasn't filled the big shoes he followed. Sussman brought back the call-in aspect which Rodgers detested, and Sussman has carved out a niche for himself with his prior meteorology experience to challenge global climate change fanatics.

However, I find him a bit weak and over the top when he fills in for Mark Levin in the evenings. I actually found KMJ's Inga Barks to be a more appealing afternoon host in Levin's absence.

I'm anxious to see what's next for KSFO in the post-Limbaugh era.

-PJ

17
posted on 12/26/2011 8:17:20 PM PST
by Political Junkie Too
(If you can vote for President, then your children can run for President.)

They did a good job of keeping that a secret, although many people knew it for a long time. Jim Eason was doing the same thing from his home in North Carolina during his last years at the station.

Eason got caught up in a feud with station new-commer Michael Savage, who was the local afternoon-drive host. In those days, KSFO had Geoff Metcalf in the noon slot. Metcalf was replaced by Sean Hannity when he started his radio show.

-PJ

25
posted on 12/26/2011 8:31:37 PM PST
by Political Junkie Too
(If you can vote for President, then your children can run for President.)

I”m not saying that CC always made good choices, but for years their model was to make money off of Rush’s show on other stations and to make money on their music etc on their own stations. They wanted to make money off almost every station in the market.

Sometimes their strategy was too cute by half - and they made some mistakes. In any case, the dying music format on many CC stations is causing them to turn many of their FM’s into talk stations featuring Rush - so they are yanking the Rush show off of AM stations in the market they were selling that show to.

Boy, they machine-gunned practically the whole staff at KGO. Bloodbath. Living in No CA, I primarily listen to KSFO, though I will miss Jon Rothmann ex-KGO 10 pm. The rest of KGO I could care less about, but geeez, that was the biggy station up here and they just fired everybody. Gene Burns, gotta be 20+ years, Rothmann, 15 years, Wattenberg, 30 years. Tillem, probably at least 10 years.

I know that KGO had some expensive hosts, but the bloodbath there surprised me. People in the Bay Area who listen to KGO...libs, mainly, and that is everybody up here...I swear their dials are welded to KGO. Things change very, very slowly in No. CA. (Hippies are still cool up here, that’s how retrograde it is) While I am not an expert or even a strong amateur in radio syndication or programming I believe this will turn out to be a bad move. KGO was probably the biggest station up here and IMO this will scatter their listenership to the four winds. Certainly, competing with KCBS (news, weather, sports, little bit of CBS TV) is a guaranteed loser. Really, I have no conception what KGO is going to do. I think it could take them 3++ years to recover even their recently flagging audience numbers...if they ever do. But as I said, I just listen to the thing, I’m not a radio expert.

That (Rodgers’ opinions) is entirely possible, but Lee was getting pretty danged tired at the end. That he was broadcasting from his home in AZ perhaps made him more comfortable, but he was quite literally “phoning it in” at the end of his tenure at KSFO.

I liked Melanie Morgan in conjunction with Lee Rodgers. I do not believe she could carry a talk show on her own. I can also imagine the three-way host situation with Ofc Vic on their show got to be a major piece of overhead. Once Mel left the show it got very, very dry and crusty, IMO.

Rodgers had also suffered a severe heart/lung ailment after his last cruise vacation that nearly killed him.

Sussman and Tom Benner seem to have hit a groove, but the show seems more childish and flippant than when Rodgers was running things. Rodgers had a solid stable of regular weekly 20 minuyr interviews with interesting pundits. Susmann still has some of them, mostly new more recent talent, but only for 10 minutes at a time. The rest is yuks with "Officer Vic."

Also, they brought in a new woman, Katie Green. I'm not sure how long she'll be there, as she's still going to college.

-PJ

34
posted on 12/26/2011 9:16:13 PM PST
by Political Junkie Too
(If you can vote for President, then your children can run for President.)

Music radio isn’t really failing, it’s probably the cheapest radio to program. Most CC stations are canned and voice-tracked by jocks in NY or Los Angeles. Then you have filler fluff material from intellectual lightweights like Ryan Seacrest, John Tesh and Leeza Gibbons who cater to the lowest common denominator among us. As well as VH1 Classic Rock Nights, closet libs Bob and Tom and other syndicated music fare.

I like Katie just fine. She announces and does news/fill-ins for Vic, for the most part, and for that she is just fine IMO. Peppy voice.

Sussman, I go hot and cold on. I appreciate that he is hard working and I generally agree with him, but there are lots of times when I just find him so full of himself I have to shut him off. He’s competent, not especially dazzling. If you recall, when Lee Rodgers was sick and later easing out, Sussman often did double shifts, talking 8+ hours a day. That takes some endurance, I’m sure.

Wow !! This is a shocker. That is a lot of change at KGO. I like Armstrong and Getty (or I used to at least, I haven’t listened to them for a couple of years). It will be cool to have them and Limbaugh on the same station. My only objection is that the KNEW signal seems to be rather weak at times. I sometimes cannot pick them up very well in the East Bay - and for some reason the station vanishes completely when the sun sets - and I have trouble picking it up again until the sun rises the next morning (at least this is the way it was a few years ago, when I listened more often). With all of these changes, I hope it will also include a boost to KNEW’s signal strength.

At least somebody (hopefully) picked up Wattenburg. If it's the Santa Cruz station it's probably 1080. They have Limbaugh in the morning, but have the psychotic loon Prison Plant King Alex Jones on in the evening. ?!?!?!? At least it's a good strong signal for the Monterey Bay area.

Music is failing from a sales standpoint. Yes, it’s cheap to program relatively but getting killed by iPods and so on. Fewer folks are looking to radio for their music.

The reason CC exercised their right to program Rush on their own stations was their failing music formats. That’s the reason Rush has moved from a lot of traditional talk AM stations in the past year to formerly music FMs in the same market. There are no doubt exceptions to this, but this is the general trend line.

There seems to be a big shift on. Two stations here in NYC have replaced more conservative hosts - Steve Malzberg and Joe Crummi - with former Governor David Patterson and Geraldo Rivera. This leaves Rush and Sean Hannity on one station and causing a light to shine on Fox Radio (970 AM).

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